Prime Video continues to pursue video game adaptations for its TV productions. After the success of Fallout, the Amazon company will try a second shot with Like a Dragon: Yakuza, a live-action adaptation of the video game series now known as Like a Dragon and once known as Yakuza (only in the West).
We know that the main characters will be played by actors Ryoma Takeuchi and Kento Kaku. Do the two have any experience with the video game series? Actually, not really, and they have even been banned from playing the games.
Like a Dragon: Yakuza Actors Explained
“I know these games, everyone in the world knows them,” Takeuchi told GamesRadar. “But I’ve never played them. I would love to try them, but (the show’s creative team) had to stop me because they wanted to – for the character in the script – explore his story from scratch. So I decided not to play.” This is not a strange choice, but on the contrary it is the norm in this type of production: even in the case of The Last of Us it was the same.
Ryoma Takeuchi, the actor who will play Kazuma Kiryu
“I definitely knew the property very well, but I didn’t realize the franchise was so big globally. We decided to do our own version, to relive the characters, to take their spiritual elements and embody them in our own way. There was a clear line that we wanted to draw, but all that was there was respect.”
Recall that Takeuchi will play the main character of the series, Kazuma Kiryu, while Kaku will play his childhood friend, Akira Nishikiyama. The series is inspired by the first video game, but tells the story in a different way, also leaving aside the less serious components in favor of a more realistic approach.
Like a Dragon: Yakuza will debut on Prime Video on October 24. Finally, we leave you with the first trailer of the TV series.
